Tag Archives: John Keats

What Fictional Fantasy Means

By Robin Bates | Published: January 6, 2011

Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, teaching, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Season of Mellow Fruitfulness

By Robin Bates | Published: October 26, 2010

In Southern Maryland our eternal summer appears finally to be fading and the fall, my favorite season, is a’cumin in. To celebrate it, I am posting one of my favorite seasonal poems, John Keats’ “To Autumn” (1817). The poem takes on added significance as the news continues to get worse for my friend Alan. Despite […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "To Autumn", Nature | Comments closed

Thy Eternal Summer Shall Not Fade–True?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 18, 2010

Sunday evenings are for visiting our friends Alan and Jackie. I feel blessed that Alan is sharing his dying with us and that I get to have with him the final conversations I did not have with Justin, my son who drowned. We don’t talk that much about death. Mostly we talk, as we always […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Mermaid Tavern", death and dying, Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Moving Beyond Adolescent Fantasies

By Robin Bates | Published: September 15, 2010

Sometimes I will discover that two different works start talking to each other simply because I happen to be teaching them both at the same time. This week Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (from my Jane Austen first year seminar) and John Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes (from my British fantasy course) engaged in one of […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged adolescence, Eve of St. Agnes, fantasy, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey | Comments closed

Dancing to a Bright Star

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2010

Film Friday As this is Friday, I begin with a discussion of a film. But as it is also the tenth anniversary of the drowning death of my 21-year-old son Justin, I plan to digress. I trust you will allow me to embark on a bit of a ramble. The film I have chosen is […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Bright Star", "Ode to the West Wind", Adonais, death and dying, death of a child, Jane Campion, Percy Shelley | Comments closed

Gripped by a Mind of Winter

By Robin Bates | Published: February 10, 2010

Snow is pounding us for the third time in two weeks and classes once again have been canceled. Significantly enough, I have been forced once again to postpone Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?” queries Keats (although he’s asking from the vantage point of autumn, not that of […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged death and dying, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Wallace Stevens, Winter | Comments closed

On Literary Names and Destinies

By Robin Bates | Published: July 26, 2009

Reynold, “Portrait of Sterne” Just as I was born into a literary name, so were Darien and Toby. Before telling the story, I will follow up on the allusion in my last post to Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged fathers and sons, Laurence Sterne, names, Tobias Smollett, Tristram Shandy, Upon First Looking into Chapman's Homer | Comments closed